The Winter Prince
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: 1553. What if Catherine Howard had a son in the winter of 1541? What if he wasn't Henry VIII's son? What if he was crowned king at Edward's death?
1. Chapter 1

_Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:  
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,  
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist  
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.  
Merry, merry England is waking as of old,  
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold._

**A Song of Sherwood - Alfred Noyes**

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* * *

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**1553**

Shade-dappled light, sunshine sifting through the forest leaves, the haze of a midsummer afternoon flickering. She vaults down from her saddle, in a swirl of black and silver. Under a sheer veil, she wears her tumbling hair loose, copper and bronze and rust-red, dusted with gold. A mantle of fire around her shoulders. She sweeps a sidelong glance at her companion, through long-lashed dark eyes. A witch's eyes, a pagan smile.

"Come, my lord, and let us make love under the trees," she says dryly and sits down on the grass. Whispering silk and crackling leaves. "We shall be like to another Maid Marian and her Robin Hood, a Diana and her princely swain."

He leans against a tree. Looks down at her, the barest trace of a smile on his darkly handsome face. "Monsieur le duc would not approve."

"Ah, but I am not Madame le duchesse yet," she replies archly. "I am a virgin princess, a maid not yet familiar to a man's touch-"

He raises one eyebrow. "Let us leave aside lovetalk," he says companionably, sitting down beside her and taking one hand. "Lovetalk is for children and fools-"

"So says the man who would have made a carnal marriage! My, what would the good Mistress Amy Robsart have said if she heard-"

Suddenly, he leans forward, much closer to her. Smiles mockingly as her breath catches and color burns into her pale cheeks, white as the Roses of York. "Let us talk treason," he whispers into her ear.

She tilts her face ever so slightly, her eyelashes brushing against his cheek, fluttering. She is tantazingly close, her hair falling over his shoulder, the long line of her slender neck bare. She smells like the horses they have riden all afternoon long, like honey and herbs and sun-warmed leaves. She smells like a woman.

There is an indiscreet cough.

She heaves a soft sigh, right into his ear, but she does not move. Just loud enough for their audience to hear, she murmurs, "Harry, dearest, sweetest brother of my bosom, were you not meant to be our chaperone?"

"I-"

"And did no one ever teach you that silence and discreetness are the chiefest charms, the most desirable traits of a chaperone?"

"Yes but-" Inwardly, Robert Dudley sighs and tries to wriggle out of Elizabeth's grip but the woman has a tiger's talons - and it's roar, when moved to it. He wears a sheepish smile for the benefit of their audience, Henry IX, King of England. An eleven-year-old boy.

"Brother mine, the sunlight on the garden hardens and grows cold, we cannot cage the minute within its nets of gold."

"So-"

She waves her hand graciously. "Ponder that. A monarch is but the chaperone of his realm, as you would do well to remember. I bid you good day."

Finally permitted the chance to speak, Harry calls out, "And I bid you both much merriness of heart, in your pursuits to which I shall leave you!" They can hear his laughter ringing behind him as he rides further on.

Elizabeth's head lolls on Robert's shoulder and she smiles up at him through crinkled black eyes. "He was ever the more tractable of the two," she says quietly. "Had Edward seen us in this fashion-" She sighs and looks down. "Is it true that he believed that God whispered in his ear, at the end, and thenceforth had Mary and I declared bastards?"

"Sickbed fancies, and you have been reinstated by My Lord of Norfolk who heads the Regency Council now-"

But she is not listening to him. "I taught him to sew," she says, and there is a hard little knot of pain in her voice. "He was but four and I was eight. My royal father would have had my head for it, of a surety-"

"Sewing being hardly a manly occupation."

"-But he _would_ stitch, he commanded me as Prince of Wales to teach him to stitch shirts! Never was such a command delievered in the realm." She pauses. "I was twelve when Harry was four. He never asked me to teach him to sew, and I marked that well. Merry, I marked that well and took it as an omen of the times-"

"Why, how weak and womanish we find ourselves growing! What omen did My Lady find?"

"That our prince would grow to be weak and womanish - God bless his soul, poor child. A slight, sickly Tudor prince and a strong, lusty Howard boy."

"You say a Tudor prince and a Howard boy," he murmurs, his voice pitched lower than the rustle of the wind through the leaves. If the stone walls of palaces have ears, the wooden walls of forests are not far behind.

"I mean what I say," she says steadily, though softly, ever so softly that he has to strain to catch the words. Her lips scarcely move - it could be lovetalk she was whispering, her lips so close to his own. It should be lovetalk - a man and a maid. Who would dare call it treason? "The Tudor line died with my only brother's death. Not that I would call it lamentable, though some might..." She laughs dryly.

"The Lady Mary? She is a bastard, a barren bastard if the Duke of Norfolk has his way."

"Aye... that is so. They only made me a princess again, not because I am their kinswoman, but because they need the French alliance and they believe me to be tractable. And of course if ill should come to Henry - if the choice came down to the Spanish Papist who is near the change of her life and a bonny Protestant girl, who would they rather have? And after me, there are the Grey girls and God knows your father has seen to _them._" Her eyes twinkle. "Now let me see - our dour Lady Jane is Guildford's most loving bride. Catherine, they wed to the Earl of Pembroke's boy who dances on your father's strings and if that hunchbacked child, Mary was old enough - but there. Peace from hard words." She smiles coquettishly up at him. "Let us have naught but sweet words now, for it is meet that we play at sweethearting - as my brother fondly believes us to be."

"Luck to us that Harry is a child, and a mooncalf at that. His mother must have taught him to believe in love for he could never have had that from his father."

Silence falls, a cold, crackling silence creeping in through the warmth of the summer afternoon. She toys negligently with his dark curls, lips pursed. Presently, she says, an edge in her voice, "Were you very well acquainted with his father, my bonny, sweet Robin?" She continues, "Hazel eyes and hair like gold, when all the rest of us - Mary, Edward, I - were carrot-tops. But then my father doted upon the very idea of a son, no matter how he got one." She sighs, "Three Tudor boys all gone the same way - Prince Arthur, the Fitzroy boy, Edward... perhaps it will be better for England with a Howard on the throne."

"If his wily Uncle Norfolk permits him to do more than sit on it."

She laughs. "His father was a man of fire- he does not take very much in his looks after him, God's benison on his sweet Howard face, but, in spirit..."

She does not finish the sentence. There is no need to. He listens to the chirping of the birds, and above that, the faint rumble of horses' hooves beating against the dirt track. The king and his companions will be near the clearing soon. "Let us make love," he says pleasantly and is rewarded by her roguish smile.

* * *

"Brush my hair for me, Kat."

Obediently, Katherine Ashley picks up the silver hairbrush, set with a great pink pearl, and begins to brush her princess's hair. The light from the squat, square wax candles strikes Elizabeth's long hair and it shimmers like spun gold. She tips her looking glass and gazes at her reflection with catlike satisfaction. Rosy cheeks and dimpled chin, silken hair, very fair, eyes, not blue, yet lovely too. "I am the most strikingly beautiful woman in all Christendom," she says.

"They say that French King's _maîtresse_-en-_titre__, _Diane de Poitiers is the very loveliest," Kat answers.

"Oh, you are determined as ever to quash my vanity! It will not be quashed, I revel in it - very well, if I am not the most beautiful woman in Christendom I shall call myself the most beautiful princess in all the world. Tell me, is my hair not fine? Fine to superfluity?"

"As fine as the manes of Robert Dudley's pet mares. He is said to brush them himself, and will not let his grooms tend to them."

Elizabeth replies evenly, "Robin is a great lover of horses."

"A great lover, too, they say."

"They will say anything."

"That they will, and who ought to know it better than yourself? Though it seems to me that it is a lesson that you would like to forget!"

"It was a hard lesson, harshly learnt, Kat. I am not fool enough to forget it."

"It is a dangerous game you are playing, mistress."

She smiles. "I being a maid-"

"Am nothing cunning! Yes, how long will that serve you? Call yourself a maid?"

"I do." She is serene, poised. "My mother was once the most notorious virgin in Christendom - it was the best part of her dower."

"Her dower did not serve her well, then."

"Peace, Kat. My maidenhead is worth more than a pair of fine eyes and well-turned calves."

"Sudeley Castle." It is a reprimand, a warning, a reminder. As though she needed reminding.

"Five years," she replies calmly. "I was a child. He was a man, and he would take his pleasure."

_Whore's child, _Kat thinks but says, with a mother's tenderness, "It is my fault. I should have kept better watch on you, you were only fourteen-"

"Old enough to be bedded," she replies, an unwilling smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Dear God, but he was handsome!"

"So is your Robin."

"Robin has no wife. Robin stands well in the eyes of the world. And I am not a child any more."

_Were you ever?_ "His Majesty's Regency Council might think he stands too well. Certainly too well for the only princess, the king's heiress."

"Why, Kat, you are meddling with the succession! And here we were, giggling like two girls in love, over fine men!" She giggles for effect, a low, husky chuckle that could turn a man's head.

"Where you are concerned, Princess, treason-talk shadows lovetalk." She continues brushing Elizabeth's hair. "The coronation robes have arrived and the ladies of the court will try them on, tomorrow?"

"Yes. Kitty requires me to attend her tomorrow as she dresses, to tell her how very lovely she is," Elizabeth sneers. "Cat! She still thinks she's the Rose of Court, my father's child-bride and the mother of two bonny boys. She forgets that she is twenty-seven, to a day, and as for her _figure_-"

"Childbearing will do that to one," Kat agrees. "As you will very soon find out for yourself."

"What an ignoble sacrifice - to bring forth children to the ruin of one's figure!"

"Your vanity rises as the candle wick dips," Kat says dryly. "If they do not send you off to the Duke of Orleans, you will arrange a marriage for yourself with Robert Dudley but either way, mistress, they will expect you to do your duty by bearing their heirs, figure bedamned."

Elizabeth laughs. "There they will find themselves mistaken, for if I must bear heirs, it shall not be for them that I do it, but for myself. Lovely Tudor princelings with red-gold hair, not swarthy Dudleys or dainty French boys. I shall be queen of myself, wed or unwed, and I shall..."

"Perhaps it will be better if you hie yourself to Robert Dudley's bed."

"Aye?"

"You will ride him with bridle and spurs and tame him and make tractable. I do not think he shall be the worse man for it - indeed, it might make a man out of him instead of the lounging dandy he is."

"Yes, he shall find that if he weds a true Tudor princess he shall not lounge. I shall make him work."

"Oh, Elizabeth, your tongue is as coarse as your hair is fine."

"I am but my father's daughter," she replies cheerfully. "I am my father's daughter."


	2. Chapter 2

_In Aprell and in May _  
_ When hartes be all mery _  
_ Besse Bunting, the millaris may _  
_ Withe lippes so red as chery _  
_ She cast in hir remembrance _  
_ To passe hir time in daliance _  
_ And to leve hir thought driery_

**-Bessie Bunting**

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"I will be a merry widow."

"Best be a bride before you court widowhood."

Elizabeth laughed, blithe, girlish laughter, like bells ringing for evensong. "White does not become me, only black will do," she said, as her maids laced her into the corset. "Ooh- tighter, tighter, I pray you."

"_Elizabeth_," Kat said sharply. "You will faint - would you have yourself fall at the Queen's feet as you paid your reverence to her?"

Elizabeth's black eyes twinkled. "Best to fall at her feet," she agreed, "She keeps a menagerie of dashing boys in her chambers and one of them will be sure to pick me up and carry me away."

"She does not keep Lord Robert about her."_ Though she would have liked to_, Kat thought. _But the Duke of Norfolk would not abide it. She is so very light-headed, and the Dudley boy is so very handsome and so very wily - he would sweep her off her feet, given half a chance. Luck to us that Elizabeth is not as flighty as pretends to be. _

"Pssht - who gives a rap for Monsieur Dudley?" she asked, as the maids arranged her gown for her. Black - mourning for the late king would end on the new king's coronation day. Sheer, unembellished black that brought out the whiteness of the her skin and the ruddy glow of her cheeks, her lips, her bright hair. It was simple enough to please a Puritan, yet low-necked enough to please the Princess.

"Madamoiselle Tudor, perhaps."

Elizabeth smiled secretively. "A rap is but a thimblefull's worth of flirting, my bonniful Kat. Besides, Lord Pickering will be in attendance upon my stepmother - and how would pick a green boy like Dudley over a man?"

One of the maids giggled. Pert things - their mistress was too liberal. _Why, _Kat sometimes wondered. _She is strict enough about the royal prerogative should the great ladies of the court dare to infringe on't - but with her serving maids...? _

"He is a man, isn't he?" Elizabeth asked.

"Oh yes, Lady Princess."

"Quite a man..."

"As you are a woman..."

"The most beautiful in the world..."

Elizabeth smiled, a sweet, childlike smile that brightened her eyes and softened the hard lines of her thin face. Sometimes she could be as pretty as she thought herself to be. "Gramercy for your courtesy," she said. "You may leave us now - Kat will see to my hair, won't you, dearest?"

"As though you leave me any other choice."

Elizabeth waited for the maids to file out before she grabbed a hairbrush and began brushing her hair vigorously.

"Elizabeth?"

She spoke fast and low, "I won't need you do my hair - just to listen. I'll cover my hair under an _attifet_, it won't matter that it isn't tidy."

Kat was well-used to these situations. Subterfuge. Double-dealing. Artifice. Elizabeth had sucked duplicity at her nurse's teat - indeed, it was rumoured Anne Boleyn had suckled her child herself. "Will you need me to fetch anyone? Cecil? Dudley?"

She fastened her _attifet_ and said, "Not yet. They've cancelled the marriage with Orleans and they're planning one to the Earl of Arran."

"Mary, Mother of God," Kat whispered, shocked. "Snubbing the French for a bastard Scotsman?"

"He's the Queen of Scots' heir till she bears a child."

"And her Queen of France-"

"No, not yet," Elizabeth said impatiently. "And not likely to ever be, what with the Dauphin so-" She stopped abruptly.

"France, Scotland - what difference does it make?" Kat asked. "Nothing to look so whey-faced about. Or is it maidenly fantasies that's the cause of this trouble - you'd rather be a French Princess than a Scottish Countess?"

"I'd rather be an English Queen but that's beside the point," Elizabeth said. "And I should-" She paused and darted a quick glance at Kat. "I forget myself."

"Best that you remember yourself," Kat said tenderly. Then, noting how pale her princess still was, she added tenderly, "There, child, there's no harm done."

Elizabeth shook her head. "More harm than you'd understand, Kat," she said softly. "I must master myself - I must. Distance myself from all childishness, sever a woman's looseness from my tongue. And _there _is a reason to look so whey-faced - d'you think I'd wear such a sickly colour on my cheeks if I had not a good reason for doing so?"

"So what is it?" Kat asked.

"When I find out, rest assured that I shall tell you," Elizabeth said sweetly. "For the moment, be at peace, dearest. I doubt you'll remain much longer in that happy frame of mind, possessed of such sublime innocence."

Kat decided it was best not to enquire further.

"You'll tell Robin for me? And find where Lady Mary is? I need to talk to her-"

Kat's eyebrows rose. "Your Uncle Norfolk will have something to say about that."

"My Uncle Norfolk should have thought about _that _before he severed the old match for the new one!"

"Lord Robert should know by now - I won't need to tell him, he has ears over all the castle walls, that one."

"He won't know," Elizabeth said quietly, a queer smile twisting about her lips. "Trust me on that - he won't know."

"And how pray, do _you _know, before Northumberland's son knows?"

"England's daughter before Northumberland's son," Elizabeth murmured, taking a last look at herself. Tall and slender like a birch, red-gold ringlets slipping out from her silver-trimmed hood, her white shoulders and bosom slipping out from her black dress. She nodded in satisfaction. "Come, Kat."

* * *

"Is she not magnificent?" Elizabeth asked, looking at Catherine Grey Herbert. She was thirteen years old now, easily the beauty of the Grey sisters - not that that was saying much. Jane was a bluestocking, Mary a hunchback. But Catherine - ah, she was pretty. Pretty like a milkmaid. Her charms consisted of a rosy complexion and large breasts - she was an eleven-year-old boy's dream.

Harry blushed. What a sweet little boy.

"If I were a man, I would want her," Elizabeth continued persuasively, smiling at her king. Mounted on their horses, they were at the same eye-level. "I would want to ride her, to have her between my legs, to-"

"_Elizabeth._" Why did everyone use that tone with her?

"What?"

"She's our cousin!" he spluttered, crimson with embarrassment.

_Mine, not yours. _She threw an astonished look at him, "Why, dear brother, I spoke of sweet Lady Catherine's horse. A charming bay, but more fit for a man than a lady, I should say, is it not? Though they say that our Kate is quite the rider..."

"Wha- oh yes. Yes, of course." He looked slightly dazed. "Naturally, I eh-"

"What were _you _speaking of?"

"How now, my noble liege? And you, my Lady Princess?"

"Robert!" Harry looked delighted at the interruption. He gushed. "Well met, sir!"

Robin threw Elizabeth a quizzical look. "Is she not a torment?"

"You ought to know that better than me," Harry said, grinning at Elizabeth.

"Aye," Robin agreed. "Let us make haste to outride Her Highness, for I fear that she will unleash the terrors of her famed wit and charm upon us if we tarry."

"Or drowned under a deluge of her suitors," Harry said. "Come, let us make haste, I can see Lord Pickering riding towards us."

"And I see Lady Catherine Herbert," Elizabeth said. "Will you avoid your sweet cousin in your haste to hide from me?"

"You said she was a good rider," Harry said, laughing. "Well let her prove it then - we'll see if she can ride hard enough to keep up with me." He spurred his horse forwards and Robert, after a mock salute to Elizabeth, followed.

Catherine spurred her horse forwards too - she had been well-coached by her mother. _They are farming out their girls younger and younger, _Elizabeth thought, with a sigh. _Even our pretty Queen Kitty was fourteen before Uncle Norfolk put her in father's bed. Though I suppose they haven't coached Catherine for the royal bed yet - not that she's too young but that he is. I doubt that he even knows where to put it in._

In a moment she could hear they laughing - the girl had caught up with the boy and Robert had retired at a respectful distance, close enough to play chaperone, but not close enough to play gooseberry. She steeled herself, knowing that Lord Pickering was riding towards her with a mouthful of French compliments and Greek verses ready. He wooed her with his man-of-the-wordliness and his wealth. He was almost worth a royal French duke.

Almost.

The Duke of Orleans, a sturdy little boy of three, would be the Dauphin when Francis died - and Francis _would _die. He was delicate, just like Edward had been.

But Lord Pickering would always be Lord Pickering and the Earl of Arran would always be the Earl of Arran. This and nothing more.

_And they will want me to be Princess Elizabeth always, this and nothing more._

"_There was a rose_..."

His voice was sweet, his accent clear and pure. She forced herself to smile, to shoot a sideways glance at him through her long-lashed dark eyes. To laugh and cry out, "Why, My Lord, a fair face to match a fair day!"

It wasn't so bad after all, nor so hard. Courting men came naturally to her._ Perhaps it's the Howard blood, _she thought while she smiled and tittered and fluttered her eyelashes for all they were worth. _Or perhaps it's just me._

_

* * *

_

"Do they do anything but flirt her?" Kat darted a quick look at the maids of honor and ladies in waiting in the Queen's chambers. Every girl had her swain, every pretty girl had two or three and the Queen had half-a-dozen.

"Of course not. Their lady mistress encourages them. Did you tell Robin?"

"Aye. He smiled."

"Like a pirate who'd spotted gold or naked wenches?"

Kat sighed. "Yes - very much so."

"Caught Mary?"

"She's at the centre of the rose maze. Reading."

"Not praying?"

"She doesn't pray all the time."

"You astound me. Reading the Bible no doubt?"

"Well-" Kat admitted.

Elizabeth looked away from Kat. "Your Majesty?" she asked her stepmother quietly. "May I be excused?"

Catherine looked up from the dashing trio of young men with whom she was carrying a lively flirtation. _You'd hardly think she was twenty-seven. _"What for, Elizabeth?"

"I'd like to take the air. If I may."

"Why," Catherine said innocently. "There's plenty of air here."

_And too much hair. Can't you keep it under your hood, for once? You needn't flaunt it, twice-widowed and thick-bodied as you are. Your hair's not nearly as pretty as mine. _"But it is ever so much pleasanter out there," Elizabeth said sweetly.

"Oooh - why?"

Elizabeth smiled secretively and Catherine giggled like a girl. She even clapped her hands together. "I suppose the _people _out there are pleasanter too!"

_Oh yes, Lady Mary's is very pleasant indeed. For a woman with a heart of stone._ "Run along then, if you must," Catherine said indulgently. "But remember, I'll want a story out of you after you're done 'taking the air'!" One of her toyboys whispered something - no doubt salacious - in her ear and she giggled even harder.

Elizabeth forced herself to smile and curtsey and backed out of the apartments, Kat trailing behind her.


End file.
